- Is it possible to sound gay?
We know many of the factors
that shape our identities
from race to geography to disability
can impact the way we use language.
So what about gender and sexuality?
Lavender language refers to the speech practices
of LGBTQ+ people and the linguists who study it
have chronicled a rich global history
that has thrived in secrecy for decades.
I'm Dr. Erica Brozovsky
and this is "Other Words."
(bright quirky music)
- [Announcer] "Other Words."
- In the 1990s,
anthropologist William Leap
wanted to study the way people
of different LGBTQ+ identities speak
and chose lavender,
a slang synonym for gay or queer, as an umbrella term.
Leap wasn't the first to study lavender language.
The term he used
came from a dictionary of gay slang
written in the 1940s.
But his work defined a field of study
that covers everything
from how people use pronouns
to the wordplay of gossip and insults
to queer vernaculars or argots,
the complex and sometimes secret vocabularies
of LGBTQ+ communities.
One of the most famous
and well-documented gay argots is Polari,
which was used by gay men in England
until the late 1960s.
It borrowed from all kinds of speaking groups
on the fringes of society
like thieves, sailors,
theater performers, and Romani people.
Polari speakers would rhyme or reverse words
or borrow from other languages to create new slang.
Some Polari words that we still use
are naff, meaning tacky or unfashionable,
or zhuzh, the verb for sprucing up your hair or outfit
that's fun to say, but impossible to spell.
In the late '60s,
Polari started to show up
in popular music and television shows,
sort of like how contemporary queer
and trans ballroom slang
has gotten popularized through shows like "Drag Race."
At the same time,
Britain repealed part of its anti-homosexuality laws,
making the secret code less necessary for safety.
Polari started to fall out of regular use
in the gay community,
suffering a significant blow
when many of the remaining Polaris speakers
died in the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
Still, lavender linguists continued
to study and document Polari
to preserve this important part
of LGBTQ+ history.
But for much of its history,
Polari was somewhat of a secret code.
When homosexuality was criminalized in the UK,
slipping Polari phrases into everyday speech
could help you identify who else around you was also gay
without being obvious to straight people.
Polari also had slang names for police
like Lily Law or Jennifer Justice,
so that gay men could warn each other
that police were around without them noticing.
Some features of Polari also live on
in other lavender languages around the globe.
Loxoro, an argot based on Spanish
spoken by trans people and sex workers in Peru,
has a similar coded nature,
reversing words and adding extra syllables
like dosoro and cuti.
Hola becomes hosorolasara.
And Mama becomes Macuti.
This feature called cryptolalisation
allows Loxoro speakers to discuss taboo topics
around listeners they may not know or trust.
Gayle, an argot that arose
in apartheid South Africa
among gay men of color,
also borrows from Polari
and mixes it with English and Afrikaans.
Gayle's main feature is using alliteration
to substitute women's names for other common words.
Just like Polari referred to police as Jennifer Justice,
Gayle speakers might talk about avoiding Betty Bangles
or getting Dora at a patsy
instead of drinking at a party.
Gayle, like Polari,
employs a common feature of lavender languages.
She-ing, or using feminine language
for non feminine subjects.
Just like how gay men in the US
might refer to friends as girl, sister, or queen.
Lavender languages have a long tradition
of playfulness with gender
to challenge our ideas about language and power.
Using feminine language
reverses the cultural hierarchies
that put masculine people
at the top of the social order
and feminine, queer, and trans people at the bottom.
According to lavender linguist Paul Baker,
she-ing is, "Inverting mainstream society's values
so that everybody's potentially gay
and everybody's potentially feminine."
That's also how speakers of Swardspeak,
also called simply gay lingo in the Philippines,
describe their use of language.
The mix of Tagalog, Spanish, English
and some Japanese that began in the 1970s
is known as a mode of social resistance
for the way that it allows speakers to play
with gendered language rules
of the languages they speak.
Like the other argots we discussed,
Swardspeak is used to immediately identify
other speakers as queer,
and it can also be pretty useful
for gossiping or talking behind people's backs
in a way that not everybody can understand.
But speakers say it's no longer as secret as it used to be.
In fact, in circles that contain
a lot of LGBTQ+ people,
like the fashion, beauty, and entertainment industries,
Swardspeak has spread to women
and even some straight men.
Swardspeak is not just a multilingual mashup.
It's also filled with celebrity references.
You might call an inexpensive outfit Mariah Carey,
because Mariah sounds like mura,
the Tagalog word for cheap.
And Julanis Morissette means to rain
from the Tagalog word for rain, ulan,
and the iconic line from the song "Ironic."
Using Swardspeak requires a lot
of complex cultural knowledge.
There are borrowed words from half a dozen languages
and deep pop culture cuts
that can take speakers years
of engaging with the gay community
to be able to fully understand.
This helps solidify the in-group identities of speakers
through the act of creating language together.
Some Swardspeak users say
that gay lingo is like verbal jazz
where speakers are constantly riffing
and innovating off of each other
to keep this lavender language evolving.
These are by no means
the only lavender languages that exist.
As the field grows,
researchers from all over the world
gather each year to talk about new developments
in LGBTQ+ language use
and there's so much more to learn.
Many of the examples we discussed today
are lavender languages used by cisgender gay men
because they're some of the most researched argots.
Still, trans and gender nonconforming people
are also innovating language practices
like repopularizing the use of the singular they,
or introducing themselves with pronouns
when meeting new people.
While there's so much more to study,
lavender linguistics reminds us
that celebrating our own identities is a doorway
into a freer and more expansive expression of ourselves
and that there is no more direct means of expression
than language.
(bright quirky music)
(Erica stuttering)
(Erica laughing)
(Erica groans)